{"id":115,"date":"2007-03-05T05:48:01","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T05:48:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-03-07T20:20:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T20:20:04","slug":"gangrenes_poisons_and_jerk_seasoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/2007\/03\/05\/gangrenes_poisons_and_jerk_seasoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Gangrenes, Poisons and Jerk Seasoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been unmotivated to write any entries for the past couple of months, because I’ve spent a lot of energy on my personal\/professional life, and that took a lot of time. In summary, I’m doing contract\/consulting work for a while back at Brontes<\/a> with my old office-mates. It’s been 3 weeks doing that, and it has been real fun. It’s felt like a homecoming, in a way. I’ll blog more about it later. Let’s first get to the poisonous jerks who are gangrenes.<\/p>\n

The gentoo-dev mailing list has seen a lot of activity in the past couple of days. The noise-to-signal ratio has been pretty much infinite. The thread starts with kingtaco’s request for a status update on the package manager spec<\/a>. The usual suspect (is there ever any other with the ability to rile so many people up?) at work here: one Ciaran McCreesh.<\/p>\n

The story is the same. You have someone who’s super smart at technical things. Ciaran probably truly believes that his posts are technical. He may not even see that he comes off like a jack-ass more than half the time (settle down, fanboys). I’ve been observing his behaviour in this most recent thread, and I’ll be perfectly frank: he is an asshole, most of the time. He brings a double standard to the table: it’s NOT acceptable for you to make a mistake, and if you do, you need to apologise repeatedly. He, himself, is above making mistakes. And if he makes one, he is above acknowledging such trivialities. Apologies? Those are what other people do. If you say something, you better be prepared to highlight the relevant syllables in the relevant words of the relevant sub-clauses in the relevant paragraphs of the relevant subsections of the relevant chapters of the relevant documentation. If he says something, you better be happy with “go look it up.” Of course there are no personal attacks _from_ him. Those only exist in this world in one direction: _to_ him (see above about apologies). And finally, he’s happy taking something that’s partly applicable to a small part of a group of people and paint the entire group with that brush. Don’t you even THINK about painting him so broadly (see above about the relevant documentation!).<\/p>\n

And so, this poisonous behaviour has been a fixture of Gentoo for a number of years. Is he technically proficient, even superior? I don’t think you’ll find dissent there. The point that most people make is that that is not a currency exchange for bad behaviour. And they are right, it is not. The fact is that the gentoo-dev mailing list is a community. A community is made up of people. Thus, to be a part of that community, is by necessity to interact with the people in it. There is a fair number of people who look beyond all his vitriol to his technical merits. But those are not the people with whom he has a problem. It’s the other x% of the population.<\/p>\n

It’s a waste of time, you see, to question him on any of the things he does or says. It’s perfectly fine, however, for you to waste your own time gathering all the evidence to lay at his feet because you said something (that he may even agree with). And, every week, there’s someone who plays right into his hands. And every week someone else gets frustrated.<\/p>\n

The above paragraphs are after a tiring, frustrating day where all I’ve been dealing with is tired, frustrated developers about Ciaran. I’m trying my best to be objective on this.<\/p>\n

Ciaran is not the devil incarnate. I don’t think he is inherently evil, or inherently out to derail anyone who is not part of his circle of approved people. Rather, I think a number of factors are at play. The root factor is a mystery to me — his behaviour as a developer changed from when he first became a dev to the day he got kicked out. It’s a night and day thing. He retained his sarcasm. But his cynicism increased by orders of magnitude. And with that, the way he addressed people changed.<\/p>\n

Most people, when they get kicked out of a project, go away. He did not. To his credit, he stayed, and still is very generous with the products of his labours. He gives back to Gentoo, a lot of good, strong technical stuff. The PMS, when it is done, I have full confidence will be a rock-solid document. The devmanual that was his intiative is a good example of such rock-solidity. Paludis as a complete independently developed package manager is another good example of his capabilities. In all three cases, I’ll note that he’s not the soloist. That he has a lead role in all three is without question, though. And the people who work with him on those projects display a fierce loyalty to him.<\/p>\n

So obviously, he knows how to interact in a respectful and civil manner. One can only assume that he chooses not to. Is it a lead-role thing? Could be, I don’t know. Is it a personal issue he has in real life? Could also be, I don’t know. I’ve never met him in person. Those who have seem to come away with a fairly pleasant impression of him. Whenever I have worked with him in gentoo development, I have come away with a favourable impression of him. While I like him on a personal level, I can’t help but shake my head in frustration at his antics on the mailing lists.<\/p>\n

The long and the short of it is that there are calls for silencing him on the mailing list by banning him. As tactless, jerky, dickheady, half-truthy, vague as he gets on the list, I don’t think that that is the way to solve “the ciaranm problem.” I’m not alone in my belief that trolls should not be fed. Thus, if you perceive him to be trolling, don’t take the bait. Trolls feed off the attention they get (and ciaran certainly does, too), so the best thing to do is to not give them any. Banning him also does not change the culture that gentoo dev has adopted.<\/p>\n

Numerous times just today, people have preferred to assume the worst in others, and proceeded to attack them. The name-calling results shortly thereafter. The real gangrene is that culture that enables this sort of behaviour, the one that tolerates that one dev can insult another (“dickwad”, “dickhead”, “fuckwad” are examples that immediately come to mind), blaming that developer for not doing *exactly the thing that they did*. Mercifully, that particular poisonous individual left the project. Yet, he should have faced consequences. He behaved reprehensibly and then walked away, with nary a consequence. He should have been kicked (there were multiple instances of that sort of abuse from him)!<\/p>\n

And yes, he was part of the larger ciaranm circle of people, but that is besides the point.<\/p>\n

What is not besides the point is that Gentoo developers every day continue to be rude, disrespectful, insulting, and back-stabbing with each other and users, and there are no corrective measures taken.<\/p>\n

I submit to you, my fine Gentoo readers, that the culture of gentoo is what needs to change. These sorts of behaviours should not be tolerated, and their perpetrators disavowed. Not as a matter of policy, bureaucracy and red-tape, but as a matter of common human decency.<\/p>\n

In part 2 I will endeavour to trace how this culture got to where it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been unmotivated to write any entries for the past couple of months, because I’ve spent a lot of energy on my personal\/professional life, and that took a lot of time. In summary, I’m doing contract\/consulting work for a while back at Brontes with my old office-mates. It’s been 3 weeks doing that, and it … Continue reading Gangrenes, Poisons and Jerk Seasoning<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/seemant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}